It was the mud that I first noticed as we were escorted into
the holding cell at the Santa Teresita Customs and Border Patrol station. Dried
mud, on the cement floor, in chunks, broken up, trails of dust; even on the
hard benches, next to a small pile of woolen blankets and a muddy pair of
sweatpants. Next to used apple juice containers, stacked one inside the other,
which had given some small relief.

The mud in that detention center was our reminder that
someone before us had endured the harsh desert conditions, seeking a better
life, only to be stopped, detained and probably sent back across the border. We
were released 3 hours after being detained; the charges of “entry without
inspection” had been dropped. The challenges facing the previous detainees were
higher. Would they try to cross again, risking imprisonment or even death in
the desert? Or would they go back home, condemned to a life of poverty and
violence?

********************* The School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) delegation spent one week on the border
from February 12-19, between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez in the Mexican
state of Chihuahua. As our movement deepens its understanding of the militarization
of Latin America and the Caribbean, we begin to see the connections with other
movements and struggles, like that for immigrant rights.

On the US side, in El Paso, delegates met with farmworkers who told their story
of how immigrants, their livelihoods in their home countries destroyed by
economic policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA,
initiated in 1994), risked personal harm crossing the border in order to get a
job that pays more than what they could get back home. For a onion picker to
earn the federal minimum wage ($7.25/hour, $58 per day), they would have to
pick close to 3,600 pounds of onion
in one day. Many of those who provide food for us can't make enough to
feed their own families.

Activists explained how the $7.3 million-per-mile fence constructed along the
border has caused immigrants to cross further into the desert, leading the
deaths of hundreds, while the flow of drugs hasn’t been significantly affected.
The border wall – a dusty, hot jail cell – is killing people.

In Ciudad Juarez, the violence rages on.Since 2008, when President Felipe Calderón
sent in thousands of troops and federales (federal police), the number of murders has skyrocketed. Ruben García, director
of Annunciation House in El Paso, which gives refuge to immigrants once they
cross the border, estimate that this spring will see murders hit the 10,000
mark, a grim reminder of the effects of failed War on Drugs. Young women
continue to be picked up and killed, or disappeared into the vast network of
human trafficking.

One activist from the Villas de Salvarcar colonia (neighborhood) said that those
who are dying in Ciudad Juarez are the unarmed, the defenseless. Those who
benefit, as we were told, were the big business men and corrupt politicians
with development plans for the area, and backed by the police and drug cartels.

Villas de Salvarcar itself became a symbol of the Juarez
violence, when in February 2010, 16 –mostly young- people were massacred at a
party.It also was a point of
transformation of society.When Luz María
Dávila, who lost two sons in the massacre, confronted President Calderón and
called him a liar for saying that those who were killed were involved in the
drug business, it emboldened the Juarez community to continue the fight for a
new social and economic system. (Calderón later retracted his comments and
apologized). We visited the autonomous library and popular education center in
Villas de Salvarcar, and left inspired by the resistance.

NAFTA decimated the Mexican economy, and when the people
rebelled, the military violence kicked in. Mexico began sending more troops to
the SOA after the implementation of NAFTA, with over 4,000 troops trained. The
Ciudad Juarez chief of police, retired army Lieutenant Coronel Julian Leyzaola
Pérez, is a graduate of the SOA, and has been accused by the UNHCR as well as Juarez activists of
arbitrary detention, excessive violence and torture. SOA grads from Mexico,
Guatemala, El Salvador, from Honduras to Colombia and Peru are leading the
attack on social activists, under the guise of fighting the War on Drugs. The
Zetas drug cartel, a notoriously violent Mexican gang, is formed by a core of
Special Forces members trained at the SOA.

The history of economic and military violence in Latin
America and the Caribbean seems to have been put on endless repeat. We must
break that cycle.

When your house is on fire, you do everything you can to
leave and find a new home.When
immigrants flee the violence of poverty caused by structural adjustment
policies, or the violence of the false War on Drugs, they will come to El Norte, looking for a better life. Not
only must we address the issue of the militarization of Latin America, but we
must bring down that wall and demand justice for all immigrants.

*********************

Where the border fence ends at the foot of the Cristo Rey
Mountain in Sunland Park, New Mexico, close to 100 people gathered on February 19,
as we remembered the names of those who died crossing or have died in the
violence in Juarez. When Roy and I crossed the line the separates “us” from
“them”, we knew that the risks of jail time were nothing compared to what
people risk each day. We crossed over and hugged activists from besieged Lomas de Poleo, as brothers
and sisters in struggle, undivided in our struggle for justice.